Pretty Venom |N.H|

79

Niall Horan

The door of the conference room shuts as the three of us walk outside, all of us remaining silent.

Jasey walks in front of me, the only sound coming from her being quiet sniffles as she tries to calm herself down from the number of emotions she just experienced in such a short time frame.

Jim turns down the hall and heads towards the elevator, leaving us in the lobby of the hotel.

"Are you fucking insane?!" Jasey shouts at me, turning around and holding her arms out in front of her before she turns back around, starting to pace in around with her hands pressed to her face, shaking her head as more tears spill out. She tries to fight it, but this frustration that she now holds towards herself for trying to hide her tears only makes them fall faster.

"Jasey—"

"I was leaving!" she adds before I am able to say anything else. She drops her hands. "You didn't have to do that! You just lost your job for no reason!"

I try to keep myself calm. I try to remind myself that everything is fine, and that everything will get situated. Seeing Jasey worked up over this is not helping me, but one of us needs to hold it together right now.

"I didn't lose my job," I assure her, walking behind her and following her steps. She keeps her back turned to me, not because she is closing me off, but because she is trying to keep me from seeing her upset. I can tell by the way her hands don't leave her face. "I just lost it here. He can't take away my success and my name. We will get signed somewhere else."

She finally turns back around after a period of silence, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. I watch as her eyes flick up to me, before staying on the floor. "You just lost the tour because of me," she mumbles, taking the blame for what the conversation had consisted of that included her father.

When I got the call from him this morning, I knew I was fucked.

He called and asked to talk to me in private, wanting to meet in a conference room so he could show me the contracts the band had signed. He showed me every signature I had inked onto the print outs, showing me where I had broken numerous bindings and simple agreements that had all been thrown out the window last night.

I knew when he called me that it was going to be about the fight, and I couldn't stop myself from worrying about how Jasey and I would then go about telling him about the relationship we had kept from him for all of the summer.

He beat me to it though.

I didn't know there was a video of the fight. It should not have surprised me as much as it did considering I'm a singer who lost control at a party. It's really not a shocker that people had thought to pull their phones out and record it, but that thought wasn't what was occupying my brain at the moment. Even when I got back to my room afterwards, I still hadn't thought about it. I was too busy thinking about Jasey, Paige, the band, and my possible injuries. I didn't even think about the idea of Jim finding out about it, which should have been something I was thinking more about. I should have thought about the band, and I should have thought about what would happen with us in response to my actions.

He showed me the video. I watched how sloppy my punches had gotten as I grew tired with time, and I watched the blood form on my hands, as well as on his mouth as each hit collided with his face.

I watched Harry pull Jasey out of the room. I watched her flinch when his hands touched her shoulders. I watched as I didn't even notice her leaving. I watched my face get angrier, my jaw clenched as I continued to swing at him.

Most importantly, I watched Louis pull me up, and I watched the person I had been fighting lay on the floor. I watched people murmur things to each other as they started to lower their phones, and I watched as Louis dragged me out of the room.